Commemorating the 400th anniversary of the publication of Francis Bacon's Advancement of Learning (1605), this collection examines Bacon's recasting of proto-scientific philosophies and practices into early modern discourses of knowledge. Like Bacon, all of the contributors to this volume confront an essential question: how to integrate intellectual traditions with emergent knowledges to forge new intellectual futures. The volume's main theme is Bacon's core interest in identifying and conceptualizing coherent intellectual disciplines, including the central question of whether Bacon succeeded in creating unified discourses about learning. Bacon's interests in natural philosophy, politics, ethics, law, medicine, religion, neoplatonic magic, technology and humanistic learning are here mirrored in the contributors' varied intellectual backgrounds and diverse approaches to Bacon's thought.

The study of literature still tends to be nation-based, even when direct evidence contradicts longstanding notions of an autonomous literary canon. In a time when current events make inevitable the acceptance of a global perspective, the essays in this volume suggest a corrective to such scholarly limitations: the contributors offer alternatives to received notions of 'influence' and the more or less linear transmission of translatio studii, demonstrating that they no longer provide adequate explanations for the interactions among the various literary canons of the Renaissance. Offering texts on a variety of aspects of the Anglo-French Renaissance instead of concentrating on one set of borrowings or phenomena, this collection points to new configurations of the relationships among national literatures. Contributors address specific borrowings, rewritings, and appropriations of French writing by English authors, in fields ranging from lyric poetry to epic poetry to drama to political treatise. The bibliography presents a comprehensive list of publications on French connections in the English Renaissance from 1902 to the present day.

Solidly grounded in Milton's prose works and the long history of Milton scholarship, Milton among the Puritans: The Case for Historical Revisionism challenges many received ideas about Milton's brand of Christianity, philosophy, and poetry. It does so chiefly by retracing his history as a great "Puritan poet" and reexamining the surprisingly tenuous Whig paradigm upon which this history has been built. Catherine Martin not only questions the current habit of "lumping" Milton with the religious Puritans but agrees with a long line of literary scholars who find his values and lifestyle markedly inconsistent with their beliefs and practices. Pursuing this argument, Martin carefully reexamines the whole spectrum of seventeenth-century English Puritanism from the standpoint of the most recent and respected scholarship on the subject. Martin also explores other, more secular sources of Milton's thought, including his Baconianism, his Christian Stoic ethics, and his classical republicanism; she establishes the importance of these influences through numerous direct references, silent but clear citations, and typical tropes. All in all, Milton among the Puritans presents a radical reassessment of Milton's religious identity; it shows that many received ideas about the "Puritan Milton" are neither as long-established as most scholars believe nor as historically defensible as most literary critics still assume, and resituates Milton's great poems in the period when they were written, the Restoration.

Solidly grounded in Milton's prose works and the long history of Milton scholarship, Milton among the Puritans: The Case for Historical Revisionism challenges many received ideas about Milton's brand of Christianity, philosophy, and poetry. It does so chiefly by retracing his history as a great "Puritan poet" and reexamining the surprisingly tenuous Whig paradigm upon which this history has been built. Catherine Martin not only questions the current habit of "lumping" Milton with the religious Puritans but agrees with a long line of literary scholars who find his values and lifestyle markedly inconsistent with their beliefs and practices. Pursuing this argument, Martin carefully reexamines the whole spectrum of seventeenth-century English Puritanism from the standpoint of the most recent and respected scholarship on the subject. Martin also explores other, more secular sources of Milton's thought, including his Baconianism, his Christian Stoic ethics, and his classical republicanism; she establishes the importance of these influences through numerous direct references, silent but clear citations, and typical tropes. All in all, Milton among the Puritans presents a radical reassessment of Milton's religious identity; it shows that many received ideas about the "Puritan Milton" are neither as long-established as most scholars believe nor as historically defensible as most literary critics still assume, and resituates Milton's great poems in the period when they were written, the Restoration.

Milton's contempt for women has been accepted since Samuel Johnson's famous Life of the poet. Subsequent critics have long debated whether Milton's writings were anti- or pro-feminine, a problem further complicated by his advocacy of 'divorce on demand' for men. Milton and Gender re-evaluates these claims of Milton as anti-feminist, pointing out that he was not seen that way by contemporaries, but espoused startlingly modern ideas of marriage and the relations between the sexes. The first two sections of specially commissioned essays in this volume investigate the representations of gender and sexuality in Milton's prose and verse. In the final section, the responses of female readers ranging from George Eliot and Virginia Woolf to lesser known artists and revolutionaries are brought to bear on Milton's afterlife and reputation. Together, these essays provide a thoroughly new perspective on the contested issues of femininity and masculinity, marriage and divorce in Milton's work.

The study of literature still tends to be nation-based, even when direct evidence contradicts longstanding notions of an autonomous literary canon. In a time when current events make inevitable the acceptance of a global perspective, the essays in this volume suggest a corrective to such scholarly limitations: the contributors offer alternatives to received notions of 'influence' and the more or less linear transmission of translatio studii, demonstrating that they no longer provide adequate explanations for the interactions among the various literary canons of the Renaissance. Offering texts on a variety of aspects of the Anglo-French Renaissance instead of concentrating on one set of borrowings or phenomena, this collection points to new configurations of the relationships among national literatures. Contributors address specific borrowings, rewritings, and appropriations of French writing by English authors, in fields ranging from lyric poetry to epic poetry to drama to political treatise. The bibliography presents a comprehensive list of publications on French connections in the English Renaissance from 1902 to the present day.

Milton's contempt for women has been accepted since Samuel Johnson's famous Life of the poet. Subsequent critics have long debated whether Milton's writings were anti- or pro-feminine, a problem further complicated by his advocacy of 'divorce on demand' for men. Milton and Gender re-evaluates these claims of Milton as anti-feminist, pointing out that he was not seen that way by contemporaries, but espoused startlingly fresh ideas of marriage and the relations between the sexes. The first two sections of specially commissioned essays in this volume investigate the representations of gender and sexuality in Milton's prose and verse. In the final section, the responses of female readers ranging from George Eliot and Virginia Woolf to lesser-known artists and revolutionaries are brought to bear on Milton's afterlife and reputation. Together, these essays provide a critical perspective on the contested issues of femininity and masculinity, marriage and divorce in Milton's work.